Welcome | Tolpuddle Martyrs Contact Us Welcome In the 1830s life in villages like Tolpuddle was hard and getting worse. Farm workers could not bear yet more cuts to their pay. Some fought back by smashing the new threshing machines but this brought harsh punishments. In 1834, farm workers in west Dorset formed a trade union. Unions were lawful and growing fast but six leaders of the union were arrested and sentenced to seven years’ transportation for taking an oath of secrecy. A massive protest swept across the country. Thousands of people marched through London and many more organised petitions and protest meetings to demand their freedom. The Tolpuddle Martyrs Museum tells the harrowing tale of the Martyrs arrest, trial and punishment, leading to the foundation of modern day trade unionism. The Festival 15-17 July 2016 Every year in July, thousands of people to enjoy the Tolpuddle Martyrs' Festival. It is a weekend of family entertainment, stalls, political debate, comedy, music and a grand procession through the village.

As the sun rose on 24th February 1834, Dorset farm labourer George Loveless set off to work, saying goodbye to his wife Betsy and their three children. About In the 1830s life in villages like Tolpuddle was hard and getting worse. Farm workers could not bear yet more cuts to their pay. Some fought back by smashing the new threshing machines but this brought harsh punishments. In 1834, farm workers in west Dorset formed a trade union. Unions were lawful and growing fast but six leaders of the union were arrested and sentenced to seven years’ transportation for taking an oath of secrecy. A massive protest swept across the country. Thousands of people marched through London and many more organised petitions and protest meetings to demand their freedom. The Museum | Tolpuddle Martyrs Contact Us The Museum The Tolpuddle Martyrs Museum tells the harrowing tale of the Martyrs' arrest, trial and punishment, leading to the foundation of modern day trade unionism. The museum is a modern, informative, and educational exhibition, using interactive touch screen displays new graphic panels telling the story in text and images.

The museum sets out the Martyrs' story in four sections: Before the arrest, The Oath and Betrayal, Transportation, and the Homecoming. The museum evolved from library which formed part of the Tolpuddle Martyrs' Memorial Cottages, built in 1934 to mark the centenary of the Martyrs' conviction. The library, meant for use by the workers living in the cottages, soon became a depository for various artefacts, documents and memorabilia relating to the history of the Tolpuddle Martyrs. Over the years, a rather ad hoc display telling the story of the Martyrs had evolved into the Tolpuddle Martyrs' Museum. Tolpuddle has long been a place of pilgrimage for trade unionists and visitors from the UK and around the world, for young and old alike. Visitors can discover for themselves how the Tolpuddle Martyrs changed the face of social history and, through their beliefs and actions, made such an impact on society. Museum Opening Times (Summer April-October) Closed on Mondays.

Closed on the Sunday of the Tolpuddle Marytrs' Festival (3rd Sunday in July) Tuesday - Saturday 10.00am - 5.00pm The Tolpuddle Martyrs The Tolpuddle Martyrs by Brenda Ralph Lewis The picture of death, with its grim, gaunt features was six feet high and awesome. It seemed to fill the cramped room of the cottage at Tolpuddle, Dorset, glowering down upon the two initiates who knelt cringing before it. For John Lock and Edward Legg, the sight increased the fears already fostered by the atmosphere of secrecy, and the solemn, white-robed figures of George Loveless and his brother James. 'Remember thine end!' James intoned, pointing to the picture and it was in trembling awareness of it that Legg and lock then took an oath never to reveal anything of the agricultural workers' union they were about to join. Scenes like this, deliberately designed to appeal to primitive fears and stir deep-rooted superstition, were not uncommon in the forming of trades unions in the 19th century.

Intelligent men like George Loveless, founder of the Tolpuddle union in December 1833, disliked such ritual, but it was virtually the only way to impress illiterate workers whose spirits had been withered into apathy by endless labour and poverty. As George Loveless and his fellow unionists knew only too well, a wage that never exceeded 9 shilling a week offered nothing but despair. There was little health or happiness to be found in the wretched insanitary novels most employers grudgingly provided, nor in the constant presence of children hollow-eyed and gaunt from lack of food. There could be nothing industrious about men who knew that however hard and long they worked, they could never earn enough to give their families any hope of anything better. . The society which imposed such wretchedness on the labouring majority was dedicated to the ideal of an unchanging social structure which locked each man security in his place. In this context, nothing frightened the wealthy, favoured classes more than a trades union. Though perfectly legal since 1824, the idea of workers combining for concerted action stirred fears which, in some quarters, reached pathological proportions.

At the same time, nothing about trades unions was more disturbing than ritual oath-taking of the sort which took place in the Tolpuddle cottage in 1833. It was the administering of these oaths, cited as illegal under the 1797 Mutiny Act, which led to the arrest on 24 February 1834 of George and James Loveless, Thomas and John Stanfield, James Hammett and James Brine. Just over three weeks later, on 17 March, these six men appeared in court at Dorchester to find the full vengeance of government and law awaiting them. Mr. Baron Williams, the trial judge, was openly hostile and informed a carefully chosen jury before the proceedings began that trades unions and everything about them were evil. Against this armament, the defence that the Tolpuddle six had been seeking only to provide a fund for workers to draw on in time of need had a hopeless ring about it. After a two-day trial, at which John Lock and Edward Legg gave evidence against them, the six accused were found guilty and sentenced to seven years' transportation to Australia.

This punishment, second in severity only to death, was normally reserved for the worse and most debauched of criminals. Fortunately, however, the British sense of fair play, which often operates after an event which originally had full popular support, provoked protests all over the country even before the Tolpuddle six had set sail for Australia in filthy convict ships shackled to thieves and murderers.The objections came not only from trade unionists and radical opponents of the government whose motives were obvious, but from ordinary citizens and even from government supporters and enemies of the trades unions. What united these disparate elements was the conviction that indictment and trial had been unjust and the sentences needlessly severe. Soon, petitions pleading for mercy were pouring into Parliament. Some protesters appealed directly to King William IV or the Home Secretary, Lord Melbourne, while thousands attended noisy and emotional protest meetings. The government and Lord Melbourne in particular, reacted at first with indifference, hoping the furore would gradually die down. However, it remained vociferously alive and in 1835, after the election of a new government, Melbourne, now Prime Minister, was obliged to sanction the move he had shirked as Home Secretary.

On 14 March 1836, Melbourne's successor, the enlightened and liberal-minded Lord John Russell announced to Parliament that free pardons had been granted to all six men. Due to distance and delay in Australia, George Loveless did not return to England until 13 June 1837. James Loveless, James Brine and Thomas and John Stanfield came home on 16 March 1838 and James Hammett some time in August 1839. To make amends to those who were soon dubbed the Tolpuddle Martyrs, farms had been purchased for them in Essex from a public fund, the Dorchester Labourers' Farm Tribute. However, these brought them neither peace nor satisfaction. Mud had been slung and it stuck. The neighbours were antagonistic, regarding the Tolpuddle six as convicts, indelibly stamped with the taint of a criminal past.

More importantly, their names sprang first to reactionary minds whenever some trade union activity or hint of unrest occurred in the vicinity.Worse still, the Loveless family were linked to the latest threat to the 'ideal' unchanging society, the Chartist Movement which sought to secure the right to vote for every man, however humble. In 1844, disgusted with the notoriety and the pointing fingers, all the men except James Hammett emigrated to Canada. Trade unionists might have regarded them as martyrs - they still do - but the protests which gained them reprieve had not implied a shift in basic thinking. Society remained as stratified as ever, and Britain's overprivileged classes, replete with most of its wealth and all its power, still had no intention of sharing either with those they contemptuously termed the 'lower orders'. In 1844, another 75 years of hard, painful effort lay ahead of those who, like the men of Tolpuddle, sought to force upon society a liberal change of heart. Copyright ©1996, 1997, 1998 Britannia Internet Magazine.

Feature: The Tolpuddle Martyrs The Tolpuddle Martyrs were transported for resisting starvation wages and forming a trade union... 1833 – 1838: The Tolpuddle Martyrs WORKERS, SEPT 2012 ISSUE In 1833 farm labourers in the Dorset village of Tolpuddle suffered severe reductions in their wages, prompting forty men to form a trade union. In February 1834 six of them were arrested: James Brine, James Hammett, George Loveless, James Loveless, Thomas Standfield and John Standfield. Convicted of swearing a secret oath, they were transported to Australia, triggering widespread agitation for their release and return. Photo: Workers Progressing alongside the Industrial Revolution was a parallel agrarian revolution, and poorly paid agricultural workers were a significantly large though often overlooked group. The long process of enclosure, whose high point came between 1770 and 1830, saw land carved up by act of parliament and given to bigger landowners. Lands once held in common and villagers’ small strips of land for food production were expropriated.

If you remained in the countryside and wanted to put food in your belly, you had no choice but to work for large landowners who dictated the rate of pay. With no land of their own, the Tolpuddle labourers earned a weekly wage on the farm of George Frampton, a major local landowner. At the beginning of the 1830s the going rate in Tolpuddle was 9 shillings a week. This would have been sufficient to buy bread but not enough to pay rent and purchase other foods. Yet, in 1833, the landowners cut the rate from 9 shillings to 8, then later to 7 and were considering a further reduction to 6. Starvation wages These were starvation wages. How did the rural poor respond to such desperate conditions? Some suffered in silence, others moved to work in the growing cities. Some fought back: in the Captain Swing uprisings across East Anglia in 1830, labourers set fire to hayricks: 644 were imprisoned, 481 transported, 19 hanged. A different approach was taken in Tolpuddle.

Farmworkers there met with delegates from the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union (GNCTU) and then founded the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers in order to overturn the wage reductions, which were an acute problem in remote parts of southern England, where farmers did not have to compete with the higher wages paid to workers in London or the northern industrial towns. The introduction of mechanisation and a surplus of labour made the situation worse. The Tolpuddle farm labourers were prepared to stand firm and push Frampton for a living rate of 10 shillings a week. They presented their “perfectly reasonable demands” believing the landowner would have to agree, as they represented a substantial part of the village workforce. The landowners and local magistrates took fright and wrote in 1834 to the Home Secretary, Lord Melbourne, to complain about the union. As there was no law against forming a union (the Combination Acts having been repealed in 1825), the six were arrested and tried at Dorchester Court for breaking an obscure 1797 law, the Mutiny Act, which prohibited the swearing of oaths to stop mutiny at sea.

A jury was selected from those most unfriendly to the farm labourers’ cause – landowners and land-renters. Their stated “crime” was that each had made an oath promising not to reveal the content of their meeting. In fact the martyrs were punished for having the audacity to form a union. Secret oaths undertaken by freemasons in their lodges were common, but secret oaths by workers smacked of revolution to the rulers of the day. Rally commemorates martyrs’ struggle Every year workers gather in Tolpuddle to remember the martyrs’ struggle. Here’s a report on this year’s march from one participant. “My coach from the Isle of Wight had 18 trade unionists of various political persuasions on board. I sold a number of copies of Workers and handed out leaflets on the ‘10 reasons to leave the EU.’ When I got to the Tolpuddle memorial site, I started to hand out the leaflets to everyone who walked near me. Most took the leaflet, but a small number, maybe, about three, people, gave them back, horrified at the thought of leaving the EU!

Most people took the leaflet and after glancing at it, some people said, “Only ten reasons to leave the EU. You must be joking”. It would appear that most of the trade unionists who took the leaflet couldn’t wait for a referendum on leaving the EU. After a number of lively debates on the topic and running out of leaflets, I got myself geared up to carry the Isle of Wight Trades Council banner. There were banners from as far afield as South Wales, Bristol, Southampton, Portsmouth, London and all places in-between. It was quite a festive event, with bands playing various types of music, with everyone jigging about as they walked through the village of Tolpuddle. While I was having a pint in the beer tent, I met a number of fellow Unite members. One, a young shop steward for the binmen in Southampton, had been involved in the industrial action with the City Council, which secured a restoration of his wages after they had been cut by the previous council administration. I had a number of discussions with trade unionists about growing the union to fight for wages and conditions, and saving Britain from destruction by capitalism.

I felt, as I boarded my coach back to the Island, it had been a good day.” ■ George Loveless observed in their defence, “We have injured no man’s reputation, person or character. We were uniting to preserve ourselves, our wives and our children from utter degradation and starvation.” Summing up, the judge remarked, “If such societies were allowed to exist it would ruin masters, cause a stagnation in trade and destroy property” and “The object of all legal punishment is not altogether with a view of operating on the offenders themselves, it is also for the sake of offering an example and warning.” The Martyrs were sentenced to a maximum sentence of seven years' transportation. Their convict ship took four months to reach Australia, where they worked like serfs in penal settlements, on chain gangs and farms in New South Wales and Tasmania. Grand Meeting The treatment of the Tolpuddle Martyrs triggered huge opposition. In March 1834 over 10,000 people attended a Grand Meeting of the Working Classes called by the Grand National Consolidated Trade Union. On 21 April a vast demonstration assembled near King’s Cross in Copenhagen Fields. 800,000 signatures were collected for their release.

Because families of the transported men and other members of the Tolpuddle union were refused parish relief by farm-owning local magistrates, the trade unionist London Dorchester Committee (LDC) collected financial support for the families. A campaign to take legal action against the Duke of Cumberland (the King’s brother) on the grounds that he took a secret oath as head of the Orange Lodges of Freemasons led to a full pardon from the King in 1836, though they only returned to Britain in 1837. James Hammett returned in 1839. Until 1845 the men leased two tenant farms in Essex out of LDC funds. Only Hammett returned to Tolpuddle working in the building trade. He died in the Dorchester workhouse in 1891. ■ The Tolpuddle Martyrs | Historic UK By Ellen Castelow , Contributing Writer | Comments Throughout history, tales of brave, courageous people being executed for their beliefs, usually religious ones, are well known but the men who became known as the Tolpuddle Martyrs were not persecuted for their religion.

Tolpuddle is a village near Dorchester in Dorset , where in the years 1833 and 1834 a great wave of trade union activity took place and a lodge of the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers was established. Entry into the union involved payment of a shilling (5p) and swearing before a picture of a skeleton never to tell anyone the union's secrets. Lord Melbourne was Prime Minister at this time and he was bitterly opposed to the Trade Union Movement, so when six English farm labourers were sentenced in March 1834 to 7 years transportation to a penal colony in Australia for trade union activities, Lord Melbourne did not dispute the sentence. The labourers were arrested ostensibly for administrating unlawful oaths, but the real reason was because they were trying to protest at their already pitiful wages. The labourers at Tolpuddle lived in meagre poverty on just 7 shillings a week and wanted an increase to 10 shillings, but instead their wages were cut to 6 shillings a week. The Whig government had become alarmed at the working class discontent in the country at this time.

The government and the landowners, led by James Frampton, were determined to squash the union and to control increasing outbreaks of dissent. Six of the Tolpuddle labourers were arrested: George and James Loveless, James Brine, James Hammett, Thomas Stansfield and his son John. It was George Loveless who had established the Friendly Society of Agricultural Workers in Tolpuddle. At their trial, the judge and jury were hostile and the six were sentenced to 7 years transportation to Australia. After the trial many public protest meetings were held and there was uproar throughout the country at this sentence, so the prisoners were hastily transported to Australia without delay. The people were incensed at this treatment and after 250,000 people signed a petition and a procession of 30,000 people marched down Whitehall in support of the labourers, the sentences were remitted. After some delay, the the six were given a free passage home from Australia. When finally home and free, some of the 'martyrs' settled on farms in England and four emigrated to Canada.

The tree under which the 'martyrs' met is now very old and reduced to a stump, but it has become a place of pilgrimage in Tolpuddle, where it is known as the 'Martyrs Tree'. A commemorative seat and shelter was erected in 1934 on the green by the wealthy London draper Sir Ernest Debenham. The story of the Tolpuddle Martyrs is perhaps the best known case in the early history of the Trade Union Movement. Useful Information: Tolpuddle Martyrs Rally - third week in July The annual festival to commemorate the memory of the struggle of the Tolpuddle Martyrs is held on the third weekend of every July in the Dorset village of Tolpuddle. International speakers join with workers' representatives, and progressive musicians and artists to make it an occasion to remember. Shire Hall, Dorchester Built in 1797, this Grade I Listed Building was designed by London architect Thomas Hardwick. It retains the courtroom where the Tolpuddle Martyrs were sentenced to transportation to Australia for their part in the early trade union movement in 1834. It appears today as it did at that time.

Under the court are the cells in which prisoners were kept while waiting for their appearance in court. Tweet If you enjoyed this article, you might also like... The Rebecca Riots - The Rebecca Riots were in fact a series of protests that took place between 1839 and 1843, throughout the rural areas of west Wales ...The protesters were mainly simple farming folk who had been angered ... Dorchester - Thomas Hardy's Casterbridge, and its history ... Ascott Martyrs - A true story of 16 indomitable women and their struggle for justice ... Peterloo Massacre - On that August day, the 16th, a large body of people carrying banners bearing slogans against the Corn Laws, and in favour of universal suffrage, held a meeting at St. Peter's Fields in Manchester. The magistrates of the day became alarmed and ordered ... Advertising The Tolpuddle Martyrs | Dorset Ancestors The Tolpuddle Martyrs by Dorset Ancestors . There is a surprising number of similarities between the story of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, from the 1830’s and that of the Monmouth Rebellion 150 years earlier.

Both are partly set in the Dorset county town of Dorchester, where the heavy hand of the law came down; in both cases the ruling classes were desperate to keep their hold on the lower orders; and there was a strong religious element in both risings. West Country peasantry was involved in both clashes; and transportation – sending the convicted to the other side of the earth – was still seen as a good way of dealing with malefactors. There, however, the similarities end, for the Tolpuddle Martyrs were just six in number. They were all sentenced to be transported, as it transpired to Australia and Tasmania, for seven years. In one stroke the farms in the Piddle Valley, which meanders picturesquely towards the English Channel, lost much valuable labour. Early one freezing February morning the men were asked by the local constable to accompany him to Dorchester, walking the whole six miles – and they did not return. Their crime was simply taking part in an illegal oath administration ceremony in one of the cottages. There had been rick burnings in England’s Southwest a few years earlier and the ‘Captain Swing’ riots were notorious across the country.

The farmers themselves were in a fix: if they were forced to pay higher wages they could not pay higher rents to landowners. The Tolpuddle labourers were faced with having to take home only 6s. a week to keep their families and homes, and this was putting them in a rebellious mood. However, the leading County magistrate, James Frampton of Moreton had been in Paris during the French Revolution and colluded with the Home Secretary, Lord Melbourne, about the problem in neighbouring Tolpuddle. The heaviest punishment possible for mutiny involving an oath (actually a Royal Navy offence) was transportation. Of the six ‘mutineers’ George Loveless, the leader, went to Tasmania and the others to New South Wales. The tiny Methodist chapel at Tolpuddle (succeeded by another Methodist church further out of the village) was denuded of keen members, for five of the six martyrs belonged there If you go to Tolpuddle, perhaps during the great annual trades’ union-supported rally held each July, look at the Thomas Standfield cottage on the main road, with its plaque.

Think of him in his fifties in the Aussie bush, sleeping out in a ‘watch-box’ and looking after sheep – a few months after leaving his Dorset farm. It sounds almost idyllic. But his son John, who was later to become a mayor in the London area of Ontario, Canada, to which five of the martyrs eventually emigrated, described his condition: covered in sores, his home a ‘shed’ six feet by 18 inches, and having to walk four miles by night for his rations. The Tolpuddle men, described as ‘politicals’, got extra harsh treatment from their masters. Yet it has been said they helped shape Australia. However, whether they had any offspring there is open to doubt. All the martyrs except George Loveless, who was sick at the time, had sailed from Plymouth, in the next county west from Dorset, on April 11, 1834 after living aboard prison hulks at Portsmouth. On arrival at Sydney they were marched through the streets to the barracks where they were assigned to their masters. Some masters were kinder than others. Some were brutal.

James Loveless had to walk for 14 days to reach his station, or farm, near the Victoria State border. George Loveless worked on a chained road gang, slept on a stone floor and for a week was in irons, purely for what he was supposed to have done in England. Stories were rife about the martyrs’ supposed yet purely fictitious misdemeanours 12,000 miles away. The men were pardoned in March 1838, after pressure by unionists, the general public and Parliamentarians in the old country. Only one, James Hammett, returned to live in Tolpuddle as a master builder, and he is buried in the Church of England graveyard, under a finely carved headstone. The references to Christianity are important, for the Loveless brothers have been described by a historian as “Methodist trade union pioneers”, although there is no evidence that they ‘spoke politics’ from the pulpit. On return to Britain, the men were given tenant farms in Essex. The farms were provided and stocked by the Dorchester Labourers’ Farm Tribute and the London Dorchester Committee.

Some of the men got involved in causes such as the Chartist movement and the lot of the agricultural workers. However, encountering a hostile attitude, they all, except James Hammett, booked tickets for New York in the mid-1840’s, travelling by sea, train, lake ferry and ox-cart to their new land which they were to help found. London, Ontario today is a growing industrial city. George Loveless held Bible classes in the home he built for himself and his wife (their daughter died on the Atlantic crossing). He helped to build the first church in the London district of Siloam (the Pool of Siloam is mentioned in the Gospel of John). Brother James became caretaker of the church. On the gravestone of George and wife Elisabeth is this inscription: “ These are they who came out of great tribulation and have washed their robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb”. James Brine, who married a Standfield, farmed on the shores of Lake Huron and at St.Mary’s. These men, supported heroically by their womenfolk, were not founders but true pioneers of the trade unions, for they were a powerful incentive and that remains true today.

The working man and those who lead the Labour movement owe them much. In Canada a memorial park was opened in London, Ontario in 1969. The sycamore tree where the martyrs met on Tolpuddle Green is growing strongly, the museum tells the story in banners and hi-tech videos, the fine row of cottages built by the trade union movement houses six tenantsIt is all a far cry from when, after a visit from two delegates of the Grand National Consolidated Trades Unions, an organisation led by Robert Owen, the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers was formed in Tolpuddle. Trade unionism had come to a quiet Dorset village in October 1833, but the society foundered because a spy who had taken the oath witnessed against the six. It meant that at the Dorchester Assizes, in March 1834, when the sensational sentence was announced, Dorset had new martyrs. These days, the Old Crown Court of the Shire Hall, where the trial took place, is open to visitors in the summer.

After his conviction, George Loveless threw to the crowd outside as he was leaving the court, a paper with two verses, beginning “God is our Guide!” and ending “We will, we will, we will overcome!” Tolpuddle: The Making of the Martyrs | History Today Tolpuddle: The Making of the Martyrs Email David Englander describes the 1834 events and their relevance for the future of labour. In 2002 crowds of democrats and trade unionists converged upon the quiet Dorset village of Tolpuddle to commemorate the sufferings of the six Dorchester labourers who, one hundred and fifty years earlier, had been convicted for administering illegal oaths in connection with the formation of an Agricultural Labourers' Friendly Society and sentenced to seven years' transportation. At the head of the solemn but triumphal procession walked Len Murray, General Secretary of the TUC, flanked by Neil Kinnock, the Leader of the Labour Party. Behind them stretched a long column of several thousand marchers, four and five deep, drawn from miners, tailors, engineers, agricultural workers, postmen and the various trades, their brightly coloured banners fluttering gently in the breeze and shining in the sun.

They had come to Tolpuddle to pay homage to six brave men and their families who had sacrificed so much to vindicate the right to freedom of association. And yet the venue was in one sense largely accidental; for the hapless labourers of 1834 were neither the first nor the last trade unionists to have been transported. Indeed, the annals of the poor supply countless and many worse cases of cruelty and oppression. How, then, has Tolpuddle become a landmark in the struggle for freedom? In what follows I shall try to account for the significance of Tolpuddle and describe how the events of 1834 were framed, remembered and celebrated in industrial and political action. Want the full article and website archive access? Already a member?

Log in now What can we learn about Transportation through the story of theTolpuddle Martyrs | TED-Ed What can we learn about Transportation through the story of theTolpuddle Martyrs Lesson created by Marianne Brunier using Video from timelinesTV YouTube Channel Let’s Begin… As the authorities in C18th England began to accept the 'Bloody Code' was not succeeding in dealing with their perception of rising crime, Transportation to North America - and then Australia - was seen as a possible solution. The Tolpuddle Martyrs are an example of the use of Transportation by those who wanted to control the rising demands for the rights of the common man. Create and share a new lesson based on this one. Additional Resources for you to Explore Unions organise to free the Tolpuddle MartyrsAs news of the sentence spread, the fledgling trade union movement began to organise a campaign for their release. On 24th March 1834, there was a Grand Meeting of the Working Classes, called by the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union on the instigation of Robert Owen. The meeting was attended by over 10,000 people: it was just the beginning.

The agitation spread and grew. The London Central Dorchester Committee was formed to campaign for the men’s pardon.A vast demonstration took place on 21st April 1834. Up to 100,000 people assembled in Copenhagen Fields near King’s Cross. Fearing disorder, the Government took extraordinary precautions. Lifeguards, the Household Cavalry, detachments of Lancers, two troops of Dragoons, eight battalions of infantry and 29 pieces of ordnance or cannon were mustered. More than 5,000 special constables were sworn in. The city looked like an armed camp.By 7am the protesters began to gather marshalled by trade union stewards on horseback. Robert Owen, the leader of the Grand Consolidated Union and the father of the Co-operative Movement arrived. The grand procession with banners flying marched to Parliament in strict discipline. Loud cheers came from spectators lining the streets and crowding the roof tops. At Whitehall the petition, borne on the shoulders of twelve unionists, was taken to the office of the Home Secretary, Lord Melbourne.

He hid behind his curtains and refused to accept the massive petition.Download Map of March 530kbThe Government tried to resist the mounting protest but the agitation for the men’s release was maintained. William Cobbett, Joseph Hume, Thomas Wakeley and other MPs kept the question constantly before Parliament. Petitions came from all over the country with over 800,000 signatures.By June 1835, ten months after the Martyrs' arrival in penal colonies, conditional pardons had been granted by Lord John Russell, the Home Secretary. Russell had jumped the gun: legally, a convict could not be conditionally pardoned under four years. The flurry of correspondence between Whitehall and the Sydney and Hobart Government Houses caused confusion and delay. Thomas Wakley's campaign continued. He presented 16 petitions to Parliament. There was nationwide agitation. Conditional pardons were not good enough.The Tolpuddle men refused to accept compromises and after further pressure, the Government agreed on 14th March 1836 that all the men should have a full and free pardon.Trade unions had won and survived their first big challenge.

The six farm workers from Tolpuddle were on their way home as free men.George Loveless was the first to arrive home, on June 13, 1837. He was greeted by members of the London Dorchester Committee. There was no fanfare: the King was dying. George slipped back into obscurity in Tolpuddle. Here he wrote 'The Victims of Whiggery'. A powerful polemic, it was much quoted at meetings of Chartists who were beginning to gather strength against bad employment practices. The pamphlet's price was four pence; profits were devoted to the Martyrs' families, supplementing support from the London Dorchester Committee during the years of separation. James HammettAlone among the Martyrs, James Hammett did not write of his experiences. He was the only one with a criminal record before the arrest. He alone fell foul of the law in New South Wales.He stayed behind in Tolpuddle, forsaking farm work to become a builder's labourer.

Details of his life only emerged in 1875 when he was honoured as one of the earliest agricultural trade unionists, at a time when Joseph Arch, leader of the Agricultural Labourers' Union, wished to consolidate resurgence of union activity.Farms in Essex The London Dorchester Committee raised funds with public support to buy leases on farms in Essex for the returning Martyrs. Five still campaigned for working men's rights, supporting the Chartist movement.The Chartist Cause They organised a Chartist association in Greensted, following the six points of 'The People's Charter': Manhood Suffrage, Voting by secret ballot, Payment of MPs, Annual Parliaments, Abolition of property qualifications for MPs Equal electoral districts.

British trade unionists rally 'round the myth of the 'Tolpuddle martyrs' - CSMonitor.com British trade unionists rally 'round the myth of the 'Tolpuddle martyrs' By Alexander MacLeod, Special to The Christian Science Monitor July 12, 1984 Save for later Saved London — England's trade unionists are paying tribute to six of their most famous predecessors - the ''Tolpuddle martyrs'' - at a moment when industrial relations are in turmoil and the future of trade unionism is in doubt. It was 150 years ago in the Dorset village of Tolpuddle that half a dozen farm laborers swore an oath under a sycamore tree and were ''transported'' to Australia for seven years as punishment. Ever since, the fate of the martyrs of Tolpuddle has symbolized the pressures under which trade unionism in this country has had to operate. This year the annual commemoration of the great injustice has a special significance and flavor.

The sleepy community of Tolpuddle, with its village green, white-painted thatched cottages, and famous sycamore (now supported by stakes), has been visited by angry politicians and union leaders determined to link the myth of the martyrs to the realities of the present day. Recommended: Could you pass a US citizenship test? For Britain is in the grip of a coal miners' strike, now well into its 18th week, which is generating great fury and violence. Key British ports were shut down by dockworkers Tuesday in a dispute linked to the miners' strike. Photos of the Day Photos of the day 02/08 The situation seems, on the face of things, to be a confrontation worthy of the Tolpuddle tradition. The Marxist miners' leader, Arthur Scargill, has verbally assailed the ''social forces'' that place the working man at a disadvantage in his dealings with employers. The leader of the Labour Party, Neil Kinnock, journeyed to Tolpuddle and spoke of ''an angry summer'' in which justice and democracy were under assault.

He got huge cheers from trade unionists when he claimed that today's employers were descendants of those who in 1834 had attempted to kill trade unionism and democracy in their infancy. Like all myths, that of the Tolpuddle martyrs is not quite what it seems. The six men who were shipped to the Antipodes (and were pardoned two years later) had not been involved in a strike. They had wanted to belong to a trade union (something which by then was legal) but had ill-advisedly run foul of ancient laws forbidding the administration of secret oaths. It was only after a public outcry about the severe punishment they received that the martyrs began to enter mythology. After their pardon, only one decided to return to Tolpuddle. The rest, after sampling Australia, moved on to Canada. But the folklore that encrusts their memory remains powerful. The famous sycamore, with its artificial support, is seen by some antiunionists as an apt symbol of the plight in which trade unionism finds itself. Leaders of the movement are having to contend with the Thatcher government and its barely concealed antipathy to trade unions.

In its first five years, the government has passed two laws limiting the powers of trade unions. It will soon pass a third. Economic recession has presented union leaders with a major problem: They are having to learn to live with unemployment hovering above 3 million. It is perhaps a sense of helplessness in the face of economic adversity, together with the government's firmly stated belief that there are limits to what unions should be allowed to do, that has begun cutting into membership. The country's largest union, the Transport and General, has lost 20 percent of its members in the past five years. Apathy is afflicting other, smaller unions. None of this means that 1984 will be the last year that the Tolpuddle martyrs are celebrated. The tradition is strong, and there is enough romance latent in the tale to keep the myth alive. Significantly, perhaps, when Mr. Kinnock visited Tolpuddle this year he presided over the planting of a new tree near the sagging sycamore. What the movement needs, he seemed to be saying, was a fresh start and the strong growth of a newly planted sapling.

There are many Britons, in and out of the trade union movement, who would agree with him. Next up

Question: What was the punishment of the six Trade Unionists, the Tolpuddle Martyrs?
Answer: TRANSPORTATION